


Away

by Ivy_in_the_Garden



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Cassian-centric, Existential Angst, Godchild Secret Santa 2019, character exploration, original animal characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22008193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivy_in_the_Garden/pseuds/Ivy_in_the_Garden
Summary: Cassian tries to deal with the aftermath, long after the story's wrapped up.
Relationships: Cassian (Cain Saga and Godchild) & Jizabel Disraeli
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Warflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warflower/gifts).



> I was Warflower's Secret Santa this year!!! Surprise!!

Early May has warmed up London, the flyers promoting various good luck charms to coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubillee later next month. Cassian stares at one, before catching up to Jezabel again, who moves seamlessly in the crowds, blank and unfeeling. He's afraid that if he takes his eyes off the kid, he'll simply vanish. Jezabel idly wanders the cobblestone streets of London, his hands in his pockets, his light coat undone and uncovering his beige waistcoat. 

Then Jezabel stoops down, momentarily disappearing in the waves of people, and Cassian fears the worst: he's been stabbed by some reactionary in the crowds, full of misplaced anger; he's fainted from exhaustion and overwork; he's—he's—

But then Jezabel re-emerges, cradling something, talking softly to it. "They almost stepped on him," he tells Cassian with more than a note of reproach, and his hands unfold slightly to reveal a small, ugly frog, its pulse visibly beating under its skin.

Cassian wouldn't have noticed it, but he doesn't tell Jezabel that. 

Jezabel veers off onto a secluded path, sleeping wisteria strung along it, its flower buds still forming; soft shadows nestle in the hollows of the fallen oak leaves. A pond, rock-lined and reed-fenced, lies just beyond.

"I think this place might belong to some lord or another," Cassian warns.

"I don't care," Jezabel replies. 

He kneels at the pond's edge, coaxing the creature to step out of the safety of his hands and onto one of the shaded rocks. It clambers down, all damp, prehistoric sinew and taut flesh, its black and unfathomable eyes searching. Cassian can't possibly see what anyone could see in such a hideous beast, but Jezabel lingers at the pond's edge, watching the frog make itself comfortable. He bites his lower lip as his eyes cloud, and then he takes in a deep steadying breath as he raises himself away from the pond, still fixed on the frog. His hand unconsciously plays with his tie, twisting it in worry. 

It's a kind of prayer. 

And Cassian is ashamed of himself now. He understands. He understands everything now. He understands that there is a painful grace in letting things go free. And he fights back the bitterness in his throat that tells him that there's just one more thing—just one more thing, anything really—that he could say to convince the kid to leave with him. _Goddamnit_ , he thinks. _Goddamnit, anything but this._

Because this meant it was neither his fault nor the kid's. It was just the way that people were, and he can feel them already on their separate paths, edging away from each other in an infinite line. 

_I'll love you forever, kid,_ he thinks. _That's my price. That's mine only._

Careless, the frog only bobs underwater and swims away with its long, skinny legs. 

* * *

And it's over, and over, and over. 

And he's left with a body and ludicrous story no one would believe anyway, so he keeps it to himself. He's alone again, his brief reprieve from loneliness ended. 

And somehow, the sunrise, unimpeded, bleaches the creek in the forest. Inconsiderate, really. He doesn't really know where the hell he is, but he's relieved to be away from London. And if he couldn't recognize this foreign land, that was fine with him.

He doesn't really belong to the land, anyway. That was his gift and his curse, his mother had once said. _You've got nothing of the land, and you'll get nothing yet._ Well, he never asked for anything, anyway. And now what's left to him? A grave, a bundle of half-memories that have already begun to fade? He digs a little hole, far from town, far from the flickering lights, in the woods, and it's hard work, despite the summer-softened soil. 

He does it alone, though. He doesn't want a priest to bless the grave. There's been enough of that. 

The clay eventually yields and takes and conceals, and then his work is done again but never finished. And he hopes that he and the kid don't meet again, because he'd hate for anyone to have to go through that all again. And so, he sits by the disturbed earth, waiting for some sign of what to do next, some lighting bolt or burning bush with his name in it or whatever. 

Nothing happens.

The running water over the worn stones soothes Cassian in a way. He can understand why Jezabel enjoyed nature so much. It's a relief to be away from the weighing eyes of the passers-by. And in that moment, he's terribly lonely again, perhaps for the first time since the circus. Aimless and useless, he sits there, digging thin furrows into the wet, crumbling soil in his torpor.

Dark-eyed ducklings peer at him through the reeds, bumping into each other in their curiosity. 

Of course. Of course, the little beasts had to show up in the midst of death, unaware that the horrible clock inside them is ticking incessantly down to the end: regardless of whether they find their end in a hawk or hunter, it will be an end in the end. And yet, in time, there will be another batch of self-important ducklings clambering onto the same shore, ready to repeat the same mistakes. 

How sick. 

But he doesn't cry. 

That's his little victory over all of this. He won't cry, even though his throat tightens and his face flushes. If he doesn't cry, then that's something he has kept. He knows he's not a good man, none of them were, and perhaps this is his judgement—to be wandering for the rest of his days, alone, unattached, but not free. 

Somewhere past the seed-feathered rushes, the ducklings disappear, cackling.

* * *

He's drunk on some cheap gin in some cheap pub—it's fine, because he doesn't belong to anyone, anyway; what does he care what happens now? Now when the story's quite ended?—and he imagines the whole horrible thing playing out differently. He's faster this time, faster and bolder and more clever, and he and the kid live somewhere with many sheep, and it's so terribly grand. He's kind and good and patient then, and always finds the right words. And he's never resentful of having to be responsible for another person. 

No, that's not right. 

He picks at the seams of his foolish dream: it would never have worked out. He wasn't good, and the kid wasn't some dove either. He has the same arguments with the kid in his mind, and in some damnable way, the kid manages to win them all with the foresight he never had in life. 

His days blur into the times he's drunk and the ones he's not. That's the only thing that matters now, to quiet the endless revisiting of things that had gone so terribly wrong and now couldn't be undone. Jezabel was an open wound, he tells himself. There's no saving that. Jezabel would have dragged them both down. But he didn't know that for certain, and the only certainty was that the worms had, by this time, gnawed Jezabel's corpse back to its anonymous bones. And eventually, there wouldn't be even bones. All the little bloody atoms rearranged into this worm or this dandelion, until there wasn't anything that truly remained of him. 

He doesn't know why he keeps harping on the kid. He's dead, isn't he? And Cassian may as well be dead too, but at least Jezabel got the dreamless kind of death. 

In the reflection of a bakery, he spots himself—worn, disheveled, stubble on his face. And it's that final detail that captivates him. Stubble. He runs a shaky hand over it. There are lines around his eyes, deep ones and phantom lines around his mouth. Against it all, he's slowly aging. 

He almost laughs at this, harsh and loud. 

Aging.

He had forgotten all about that, that he, too, was subject to those mortal demands. And yet, for almost twenty-five years, he had come to think of himself as an ageless being, whose face and body never changed. Dorian Grey without the painting. 

Then, that meant Jezabel's fate would be his too, in turn and in time. 

And he starts to wonder what it means to be dead: unfeeling, he supposes, but what pains him the most is the loss. He doesn't really mind if he's forgotten, it's for the best, but when he dies, that part of him that remembered the kid would be gone forever. Maybe that's what death was—a string of lights, each one flickering out in turn, one by one, but the whole of it, the string itself, would stretch on, adding new lights in its unthinking way. 

But still, that eternal youth has melted into something he both longed for and feared. 

And he wonders what he might want to do with his second life. 

He wanders, as he's always done, being dispossessed, following the path he once took. It's still as clear as the day he first took it, looking up at Jezabel, who was already somehow out of his reach. Someone's been keeping the grounds tidy, some invisible hand plucking at this and that weed until order fell in a hush upon the land. The white wisteria weeps onto his coat, clinging as he passes through. And in that pond was not the same frog. 

Its damp eyes seem to know him, to see deep inside him and say nothing on it. That is the most unnerving part. He's used to mockery, but this is something else. 

"So, you've changed too, little lording," Cassian says back. "Bet you don't remember me."

It folds its webbed hands in front of itself, throat pulsing. Disgruntled. 

"Well, perhaps, you should make the best of your gift," he replies, certain that it has. "And you ought to remember who gave it to you," he continues, certain that it won't. But still, it was a gift, wasn't it? Even if it became an anonymous one in time, it was still a difference. 

Perhaps it would get eaten tomorrow. Maybe it would live for a hundred years. 

"Mind you don't go changing again," he tells it. "I'll not recognize you then."

It creaks out a farewell—or a threat. Cassian can't really tell. He doesn't really understand Jezabel's penchant for ascribing human qualities to animals. 

Still, he prepares to leave it to whatever life it's found. 

"And stay out of traffic," he calls over his shoulder. "I didn't want to rescue you in the first place."

A strange, painful lightness alights in his chest. He feels as though he's casting pieces of Jezabel away, or maybe he's finally letting him go, but whatever it is, that his grip loosens just a bit to let this piece slip back into the world feels cruel and gentle and forgiving all at once.

And maybe at the end of it, he'll figure out what to do next in this wide and ugly world; he doesn't think he'll find peace at the end of it—that was like smoke—but perhaps he'll find something yet. And so he leaves it, that frog—that rattlin' frog on the stones in the pond under the shade in the great and godawful town of London. 

Cassian laughs to himself and sings that old song again. 

**Author's Note:**

> This went through three drafts, which is more than I've ever done for a fanfic before. The first draft was simply awful, the second was a weird rambling fix-it AU with somehow no compelling plot????, and this is the final one. Warflower had requested Cassian and character exploration, both of which are my jam. I've always been really interested in what Cassian did after Delilah, and I didn't want it to be as sad as the last Cassian fic I wrote. So I hope this one is a little more cheerful.
> 
> The old song alluded to is "The Rattlin' Bog." It's very catchy. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
